Lexi Butler

The Souvenir Game

The first time I met Charlotte I was twenty but she was much older. I didn’t know how much older, but old enough to be friends with Mom. Wednesday evenings, hot July, Char, as everyone called her, drove down the street in her dirt-colored vintage something or another to take Mom to the YMCA for painting class.

The car was a mechanics’ patchwork with pieces and parts from all different makes and models and a large steering wheel, mammoth for the car’s small size. Char held onto it like a ship’s wheel, slow and steady, as the vehicle responded to her micro movements puttering down the street. I always wondered who painted a car dirt brown, until one day I was close enough to notice flickers of yellow and red, sharper, brighter, remnant colors underneath from days long gone. A multi-colored car, and Char just went with it.

Mom laughed a lot when Char was around, she told stories, smiled more, and wore lipstick. I was happy we had Char since it was that summer that I knew Pops wasn’t coming home. I heard Mom tell Aunt Deirdre he left town with the “whore from the IHOP.” Mom never mentioned him again after that day. I didn’t either. This was the third time he left us in as many years, so why bother.

Char was the only one of my mother’s friends who was not married, and the only one who was not a mother. She would come over for coffee usually bringing vegetables from her garden, swaggering up the front walk with a plastic bag full of tomatoes or cucumbers. At our kitchen table she would read Mom’s tea leaves, swinging her long blond hair from side to side, before tugging it into a long ponytail as if prepping herself for some kind of tough job. She would look endlessly into the cup closing one eye, taking in the tea flecks as if examining them under a microscope.

Mom sipped her wine, enjoying the escape from her desk job, from my endless seeking of a ride, food, underwear or my boundless pursuit of a clean uniform for my ice cream shop job. Cross-legged Mom stared at Char, smirking, as if all this “fortune-telling” was a welcome and harmless passing of time.

“I see someone will write something, maybe a book, poetry perhaps,” Char’s words were exaggerated, making her vowels long, as if playing a part and adding theatrical flare for Mom’s entertainment.

“Heather is a writer,” Mom blurted out. It was the first time I heard myself described that way, it sounded strange coming from her lips, as if it were a lie.

 Char looked at me through the large opening to the small den where I spent that summer watching TV. My legs hanging over the recliner’s arm, soda in my hand, eyes drilled to the faded tube of colors.

 “I’m studying fiction,” I yelled out quickly, not making eye contact, engrossed in the game show flashes from the set, “not really a writer yet.”

 “You will be,” Char said, standing up, putting the teacup in the sink. She said it so knowingly it left me angry and embarrassed. My writing at college was typically benched for finding the best places for coffee and persuading girls into bed. That year I had discovered all girl’s kisses tasted better than boys  - something I was happy and unhappy to know. It’s a special and scary day when you understand yourself better than before.

Char wore her jeans a little too tight and owned an array of low-cut V-neck t-shirts in every rainbow color. She swayed her hips when she walked, she laughed at my jokes; she said people could fuck off if they didn’t like her.

One night, Char caught me staring at her when she walked from the sofa to the fridge. She turned around; she knew my eyes were drilling into her back pockets. The next day she handed me a few books, all well-loved, worn on the seams with writing and notes in the margins. Char explained her brother taught writing and was a novelist before he passed away a few years ago. She thought I might like to look through them, “it might help get the juices flowing,” she said.

Bringing the books to my room I gave them a smell. One of the pages smelt of Char’s perfume, a hint of orange and lavender. The books must have spent time in Char’s bedroom; I thought, near her clothes, her pillows, anything with her scent. I spent the better part of the next two weeks reading the small notes in the margins which were mostly Char’s brother’s grocery lists – bread, milk, condoms - and sniffing the pages of Char. If I fluttered through the chapters fast like shuffling cards the smell would reach my nose on its own.

One hot afternoon while we all sat around and watched old movies and ate red popsicles on leather furniture left gummy from the heat, Char asked me if I wanted her to read my tealeaves. She swirled my cup and looked me in the eyes, deeper in a way that made me nervous as if we were doing something we shouldn’t, as if she could read my mind. She told me I would write a book, she told me I would travel, and she saw water all around me. I wasn’t sure if she said those things because it was what she thought, or to make me feel less bored and somehow inspired.

Soon Char started calling me at the ice cream shop before closing. She would ask me to bring her a chocolate milkshake on my way home. I would ride my bike pedaling hard with the sloppy, melting thing dripping through the thin white bag. My only hope was to get to Char before the bag broke and my oozy gift, dripping into suburban lawns edges and sewer drains. I couldn’t think of anything worse than arriving with nothing to give to Char, no offering, and no reason for her to invite me to her back porch.

At first, we would just share the milkshake, passing it back and forth while we sat on her squeaky wicker chairs. I liked how her pink lipstick stuck to the edges of the straw, and how I could taste it along with the chocolate syrup. A few days later she asked me if I wanted to get high, lighting a joint and laughing while I inhaled too much too quick.

“Take it,” she said giving me the rest of the small joint. “Give it to your pothead manager, that way he’ll let you leave early and come see me,” she said, kissing me softly on the cheek. She looked long and hard into my eyes that night, “you just look so much like your mother,” she said with surprise, and some annoyance.

One night outside on the porch she came from behind me and started to rub my shoulders, with both hands, pressing her fingers in my muscles, releasing and starting again. I was still, gazing at the small flames in the fire pit, counting the cracks the wood made. I heard a cricket chorus in the background for atmosphere, as Char continued moving down my back. I was certain, and I grabbed Char’s hand and walked her into the house, and into her bedroom. On the walls of her room were circles of light from the decorative lamp, matching circling fingers, hips and legs, all moving around.

For my birthday Char made a picnic and we drove all afternoon around the back hills. Mom thought I was at the beach with friends, Char told Mom she was shopping for clothes for a job interview. We went back to Char’s house late, drinking wine and making love on her purple futon in her painting studio. The small window was just open enough to hear light rain fall on the pavement outside, breaking the clamminess of a muggy New England summer. The ice cream truck rolled away down the street for lack of customers playing a grinding carnival theme only to be broken by the truck’s squealing breaks.

We went on like this for some time. After work we had each other quickly on her sofa, me watching the clock out of one eye to make sure I wasn’t too late getting home, her underneath me, pressing against me hard and fast. Sometimes we would go slowly on a Sunday afternoon, endless back rubs, sipping beers and sharing small hits off a joint that perpetually remained in a small pink ashtray near her bed. In between, Char would read poetry aloud, while we watched old Mary Tyler Moore shows.

It was a time where ordinary scenes became extraordinary.  We made love in the kitchen, in the backyard, on the sofa and in her car. We talked of books and movies, of her travels, of my someday writing career and how stupid everyone in town was, “small minds,” she would say. I sometimes didn’t know if I wanted to be with Char, or be Char. The line between the two was very thin that summer.

Before I went back to school Char came to the house and gave Mom one of her paintings, the one the gallery wanted to sell, the one Mom loved. I wasn’t sure if the painting was for me, or Mom. Before she left that day, leaving us with the painting, when no one had anything else to say, Char hugged me but this time like a teacher or a camp counselor. After the friendly embrace she handed me a card.

 She wrote:

The painting a gift

This summer a souvenir

With Mom’s death the painting found a new home leaning up against my wall, tucked near the old faded leather chair and the large houseplant. The painting’s colors were muted pale reds and amber, a palette for a New England landscape depicting when summer turns to autumn. The church steeple in the foreground, painted dusty white, shaded with edges of brown to show its edges with a foreground of golden rod and whistling grass tips. A small dog off to the left on a long red leash held by a greenish figure only seen from the back with no face.

Having the painting around made me think. Mom, a single mother, sassy red hair and green eyes left by Pops, the town’s boozy flirt, yet again. She still had a hint of her Irish accent and men liked to hear her talk at the deli counter, asking for meats and cheese. She was unattainable, tough-minded, never giving into a date or even a causal drink after work, keeping to her house. Mom never talked of happiness. She would say she was content, but that was as far as she took it. She was proud, she was sometimes silly, she liked to sing Cole Porter in the shower. She wore high heels from time to time and kept her good handbags in boxes on the top of her closet.

The letter Mom left, the one she wrote while in hospice, the one in the Haitian nurse’s handwriting when she was too weak to write herself, made the request clear - the painting should be returned to Char.

The front of Char’s house was almost completely hidden by overgrown rhododendron trees. Their flowers large and pink hugged the yellow siding and almost blocking any sightline of the windows.

The image made me anxious. I immediately worried Char had aged beyond her years, unable to cut the scrubs into a tidy form. My memories would be shattered and replaced with the thought of an old woman in a messy house. What if she didn’t remember us making the date, or worse, remember me at all?

The doorbell was muffled, off pitch, as if rust left it on life support. I wasn’t sure anyone could hear it. I wasn’t sure anyone was home. I knocked, and a strong voice hollered, “Out back.” Instantly I could tell it was Char, her voice brisk and low, as if cut with a blade from the smoking.

I walked through the tall, uncut grass along the side of the house and through the small wooden gate, still slightly off its hinges, and still unpainted. Char stood there in tight jeans with an oversized black sweater. She was barefoot, enough though the air was cool, with a paintbrush in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. Her gaze did not fall immediately on mine, as she continued mid stroke on her canvas at that moment more important than my arrival. The instant lasted more than it should hanging on the edge of uncomfortable. Then like the old Char, she brought everything back with a safe, warm, eloquent ease, grabbing me in her arms and with a whisper, “I’m so happy to see you.”

White tight-cropped hair framed her face glowing with tan-toned skin now wrinkled on her cheeks and chest showing a spot of her age. Her body was leaner than I remember, toned in places that seemed surprising and make me more aware of my own recent five-pound gain around my waist, just enough to wrap around my belt buckle. She pointed to my hand, holding the painting and laughed, commenting about the immaturity of her style when she painted it but bragging about her excellent use of color. I saw from the canvas on the easel Char’s style has changed, advanced.

Although I didn’t know why, I told her I taught creative writing at a small college but swiftly looked down at my shoes when she asked if I wrote myself. The subject was dropped, leading to a beer and another, and I watched the light start to fade into an orange glow against her silver mane.

She made dinner, some kind of a cutlet. I instantly knew it wasn’t meat. It had nuts in it. She seemed pleased I had stayed grinning in my direction frequently as she ran her fingertips around the rip of her glass trying to make it squeak. Unsuccessful, she turned her attention to me, asking me more about myself.

“I’m recently divorced,” I said, on cue, having said it so many times before. “She, my ex, decided to move, to London actually, her lifelong dream, with someone else who also had that dream.”

“Well, there you go. There’s a book in there, focus on that”, she said, mid-bite, with a morsel of callous in her voice.

If things had changed for Char it was hard to see. The car and long hair were gone, but the house very much remained the same. Everywhere you looked were paints, pencils, small drawings and notes of ideas, often just one-word reminders or nonsensical phrases: gluttony, red ribbons in the sky, tinted blues against hearts, buy toilet paper. I imagined her rising late in the day and working until it was time for tea or cocktails, or both, and eating as little as possible to sustain her brainpower and motivation. She remained ready with opinions, strong in judgment.

I helped with the dishes, and with her at the sink I was the one who now placed both my hands on her shoulders leaning in to kiss her neck, but she was ready and met my mouth. She whispered in my ear that she knew it would lead to this, which meant my glances must have been predictable. It went fast, and then slow at the end; legs and hips, feet and toes, eyes and lips, Char in and out of my mind, of my body.

We laid there, naked, again all these years later, in her bed snuggled between two old yellow cats and piles of blankets, none of which matched or even remotely looked like they went together: An oversized orange quilt, a floral bedspread, a heavy Army blanket and a lacey white sheet. It was a disorganized bin at the secondhand store.

The bedroom window was open enough to make the curtain dance. The golden hour gave in, passing night’s baton to darkness. Char’s profile looked older in the lamp light, it wasn’t as kind as it looked in the late afternoon light. The wrinkles around her mouth gave her away as a lifelong sun worshiper, along with the small cracks at her eyelids. Lighting up a cigarette, which magically appeared between her fingers, she smirked at something the cat did with a calmness and causality as if we laid here all the time. As if this was just another Tuesday. She jotted something down in a small notebook while moving her toes to the music. Her eyes widened as if to suddenly realize what had happened, I was there after all.

“Tell me,” she said pausing, puffing on the cigarette, “have you ever been in love?”

“I think I loved my wife,” fussing with the blankets knotted around my ankles. It felt like a half-truth but the right thing to say. Could I tell her I loved her, could I confess?

By this time Char was naked standing at the painting that she had left resting against the tall antique cabinet. The colors on the canvas looked more at home here than in my apartment, less out of place. Without regard for her lack of clothing, no self-consciousness at all, she knelt down to caress the canvas, running her fingers along the bumps and edges of paint. Her back to me, small hills of her spine lined up like soldiers keeping her frame.

“I was in love with that painting,” she said, to the wall, to the air, as if saying it aloud was something she had wanted for a long time. She continued, now fully erect, standing tall, nude, holding the painting in one hand. “I could only give it to someone I loved, that’s why I gave it to your mother.”  

As if to catch her words, she said quickly, “Nothing ever happened between us. She ended seeing me shortly after you left. I never saw her again, and then I heard she died.”

I could tell by the ease of her words Char thought I knew this truth about her feelings for Mom, for even Char could not be so callous. My emotions a bucket of worms, flailing on top of each other, twisted in knots, unrecognizable as individual bodies. To say something would only make the situation sadder would make her feel sorry for me, worse than saying nothing.

“I’m not used to having too much company around,” she added, walking briskly through the doorway, grabbing a robe, and making her way to her studio. “Feel free to stay, there’s a book on the night table.”

I sat muddled in the sensation something had been said and there was no exit. Temporarily confined in place. Holding the book in front of my eyes, I let the type blur, looking at the letters too closely making them unrecognizable. I kept focus on them for the illusion of reading, for the illusion of not combusting.

I panicked Mom knew it all; she discovered Char’s brother’s books, the immature love letters I wrote to Char. Alone in my dusty room, standing near my bed, inches from my tapestry curtain, she read what I wrote to Char (about Char) and just like that I took away her only risky and joyful thing. How could she see Char again now? We had both betrayed her. She was alone again.

Twenty minutes later, paint dried on her hands, on her fingertips, Char dozed in a wooden recliner. Her eyes closed tight, one hand against her black tank top leaving small spots of paint, flecks of red and yellow like on the old brown car.

I walked the house slowly taking it all in one more time; the beaded shower curtain, the rusted kitchen faucet, the crooked rugs and the black and white photos of younger Char with younger people at protests and concerts fiercely and strongly in their convictions. And in the corner, the painting, waiting.

I took it in my hands, anchored it against my body and closed the door quietly behind me. Driving away I wondered if it was the right thing to do, taking it back, but it was, after all, a souvenir.